Liz Faircloth and Andresa Guidelli break down the CEO Triangle Trap, where real estate investors get stuck as Doers or Luxury Doers instead of true leaders. Move from being the answer-holder to developing independent thinkers using weekly priority meetings, an escalation ladder, and the 1-3-1 problem-solving format.
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You built your business from scratch by doing everything yourself. You finally hired support so you can increase your capacity, buy your time back, but somehow you have less time than before. In this episode, we break down the CEO Triangle Trap, the 3 stages that keep real estate investors stuck doing instead of leading, and we're going to share exactly how you move through each and every one. Welcome to the Real Estate InvestHer Podcast, a top 1% show helping women achieve financial freedom by investing in real estate. And now your hosts, Liz Faircloth and Andresa Guidelli. So today we're gonna break down what we call the CEO triangle trap. And there's 3 stages of this triangle. I'm gonna walk you through every single one of them. I'm gonna ask you questions to determine where you are and then what you can do to move through it. Okay, we're gonna start at the bottom of the triangle, and this is called the doer. Just like it's called, this is where you are the business. You research, you execute, you follow up, you close, you literally do everything from A to Z. So you build skill sets as a doer. You know the business better than anyone, and that is exactly why you can't let go. That is the reason. So this stage is where every great investor starts. It makes sense, right? But it's also the first trap. You have to be really mindful if you're in this trap. So here's some questions to ask yourself to see if you're in this stage. Are you still doing tasks today that you were doing a year ago? Tasks that you promised yourself, promised other people you would delegate. Second question, what would actually happen to your portfolio if you took 2 full weeks off? So for many investors, what we find is that the root cause at this stage is trust. It's trust. The problem is that you know how to do it. You know how you like it done. And honestly, you probably could do it faster than explaining it to someone else. Handing it off ends up feeling really risky for doers. But here's the bottom line, here's the real cost. Here's what I want you to really hear. Every hour you spend doing is an hour you're not spending acquiring, scaling, or most importantly, thinking strategically. You're trading your highest value time for tasks that someone else could own. That's the first stage. Let's move to the next point on the triangle, which is called the Luxury Doer. So it's not the doer, it's the luxury doer. And this one is very sneaky because what's really interesting about this stage is that you did the thing everyone told you to do. You listened, you hired people, right? You thought you bought your time back, but instead what ends up happening at this stage is that you actually just became the dispatcher. Think about what a dispatcher does. Telling everyone what to do, when to do it, how to do it, right? They're dispatching. You're saving them when they struggle. You're double-checking their work and you're setting every single priority. It looks like leadership from the outside, but it isn't. It's the furthest from it. You're still the manager. You're just an expensive one with a team that you're watching. So here's some questions I want you to ask yourself to determine if you're at this stage. Number 1, Do your team members come to you before making almost any decision? Any decision? 2, are you the one who always knows the status of every single task? Because no one actually is tracking it. 3, if you're honest with yourself, like brutally honest with yourself, just, just me and you, are you checking their work because you don't trust the outcome or because you don't trust them. So for many investors, the root cause when it comes to this stage is that you hired people, but you never fully shifted from managing tasks to developing people, to actually developing them. You brought in support, but you may not have taught them how to think, how to make decisions, take ownership. And here's the bottom line, right? There's a cost to this. You're paying for a team, you're paying for help, but you're still working like a full-time, like, operator, right? You're still doing all the doing. You just have people working for you and your overhead went up, but your freedom did not go up. Okay, so that's the second stage. Now I wanna move to the top of the triangle and this is called true leadership. So we went doer, Luxury doer, true leadership. This is the most important shift that needs to be made. Little by little, you stop being the one with all the answers and start being the one who develops people who find their own answers, okay? Here's how this works, like, in practice. I'm gonna give you some very specific pieces here. Number 1, you have weekly recurring meetings where you teach priorities, define what success looks like, and set the timeline. That's number 1. Weekly recurring. Two, we call this the escalation ladder. First, self-discovery. Do we have an SOP or an internal document to find a solution? Third, and only then, they bring it to you, okay? Third, this is a really powerful framework to teach your team, the 1-3-1 framework. When they escalate to you, right? When they bring it to you, a problem to you, they come with one issue, 3 options and 1 recommendation with their reasoning. 1-3-1. And here's the final milestone. Here's when you know you made it. You step out of running the meeting entirely. Your team leads it. That's how you know you've arrived to true leadership. So here's some questions to ask yourself to assess if you are here. Can your team tell you what success looks like this week without asking you first? Two, when a problem comes up, do they bring you the issue or do they bring you options? Here's another important question to ask yourself. Three, are you still the one running every meeting? And what would it mean for your business if you weren't running every meeting? So what ends up happening, so many investors, right, the root cause at this stage is that There is no system for developing independent thinkers, right? You may have trained your team to execute, but not to lead. And that's the most important part. And there's a cost here. How can I say this kindly to you, everyone listening? You're never gonna scale past your own capacity if your team cannot think without you. Your ceiling becomes the business's ceiling, if that makes sense, right? And the business stays stuck at whatever size you personally manage. So as we close the CEO triangle trap, right? Doer, luxury doer, true leadership. It's not just about like systems or delegation. I wanna make sure you get this. It's about identity. Identity. 'Cause at some point you have to stop being the person who has all the answers, who just puts fires out. And you wanna become the person who develops a team that can find answers without you. Okay? So ask yourself honestly, where are you in the triangle right now? Are you at the doer? Are you at the luxury doer? Are you moving into true leadership? And most importantly, here's what I want you to, to do with one person on your team. Use the 1-3-1 framework that I shared during this episode. Okay, just one person on your team. Do not solve the problem for them. Ask them to come back to you with one issue, three options, and one recommendation, and then pay attention to what happens. Okay, thank you so much for listening. Do something with what you got from today's minisode, and can't wait to see you in our community.
Thank you for listening. I hope you found today's conversation valuable, and don't forget to subscribe subscribe so you don't miss any future episodes. And share this with the women in your life that needs to hear it. I'll see you next week.
